Serenity

[dr_tectonic]

Joss Whedon is a fucking bastard and he made me cry.

You had BETTER go see his movie.

Because it's really, really good.

We just got back from the special preview showing of Serenity (all praise to kung_fu_monkey for being quick on the ball and getting tickets). And it was... wow. More than just another episode of the series. I'd say it's almost like a second season, condensed and distilled into two hours.

It still has all the stuff that I liked about the original: good writing, and a great cast, and little moments that mean more than they seem to on the surface. And this time, they had a real budget to do lots of stuff they could never do for a TV show. It's... a muchness of Firefly. And like I said, it made me cry. Openly. Three times in a row.

And having seen a movie that isn't finished, I now understand the point of post-production, and how much work has to be done to make a movie finished and polished.

If you haven't watched Firefly yet, you have four months to buy, borrow, steal, or download the series, watch it, and fall in love. Because come September, you need to see Serenity.

Comments

[kung-fu-monkey.livejournal.com]

Just to drive the point home folks, I was so sucked in that I didn't notice that he was sobbing until he had finished.

Yeah.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Weeping. I was weeping gently yet manfully.
Okay, plus sniffling pretty hard.

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

Well, it's good to know about the crying -- I will be sure to bring tissues and wear glasses for the movie -- don't want to lose expensive nice contacts... ;-)

Actually, I was really glad I wore glasses and brought tissues to Schindler's List. Funny thing was a lot of people were crying throughout the movie, and I was just fine. But I really cried at the end -- when they showed who died and who was still alive -- because by then I cared about the folks.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I have been unable to get myself to see that movie. I'm not sure why: my shelf has a handful of quite detailed books about the Holocaust that I have had to put down for pauses at various times. But I don't think I could see the movie.

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

Funny thing is that the movie (to me, anyway) was very uplifting. There are a few scary scenes (no gore, just very Hitchcockian-like) in the middle. The message is really that one person can make a huge difference to a population -- Schindler gets a large number of Jews out of danger and screws up the war for the Germans at the same time. The thing is that you get to know the characters and eventually you are told (at the very end) who is still alive or not. If you can read the books with pauses, I think you will like the movie, particularly now in the smaller TV screen and with a remote control in your hands. I almost didn't go see the movie, because I thought that it was going to be like QB-VII and other mini-series, which were hard to watch, but I figured, I got thru them -- I'm very glad I saw the movie tho.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Where does one get to go to advanced screenings in Denver?

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

There was just one. It was down in Highlands Ranch. Jerry read the email about it at 7 am one morning and woke us up to say "I'm getting tickets", and the tickets were gone within three hours. If I'd had any sense, I would have told him to buy a dozen and passed them out, but I didn't. I blame sleep.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

So, speaking as the type who doesn't like science fiction very much, is there any point in me bothering? [I was going to say that my tastes ran more to X, but I can't actually think of the last movie I really liked...]

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

Actually, I am heretical of the flavor that says Joss should have just made the series a western. The names and situations would have changed, but not by much. And I think it wouldn't have suffered from network execs saying, "But, we're not attracting the Andromeda and Enterprise fan base. This is a failed project."

The sci-fi elements are minor and relatively unimportant. I mean, sure, they're flying around in a starship, but this isn't drama founded on, "Look, isn't this cool that we're flying around in a starship?"

Actually, the show has a lot in common with "The Outlaw Josie Wales" if you've ever seen that.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

'Fraid not. For better or worse, I have seen very little television in the past 14 years.

Maybe we'll rent one DVD this weekend.

heh

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

Just fyi, Josie Wales is a movie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075029/

Re: heh

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

*sheepish grin*

[kung-fu-monkey.livejournal.com]

You don't know how wrong you are.

I'm not meaning to be confrontational on this, but there's lots of stuff you're missing. I know things that I can't talk about yet without Kate outright killing me. Both elements of Sci-fi and Western are present for a reason, and it does make sense.

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

That's cool. All I'm saying is that based on what I've enjoyed about the series, they could have skipped the sci fi stuff. The sci fi stuff is totally cool and enjoyable--I just think it helped lead people to see the show in the wrong way--as an action/adventure/space opera. Which is really not what's cool about it.

But I'm not saying it should be a pure western for aesthetic reasons--more like I think the genre-bending setting combined with executives who ALWAYS want to sum something up into the simplest possible terms ("Um. . . is this 'Buffy in space' or 'Star Wars with horses' or 'Star Trek with criminals?'") led to all the problems that caused its early demise.

[k8cre8.livejournal.com]

Are you actually scared I would (or even could) kill you? ;)



That's kinda cool.

There were manly tears? Oh. My.

I was all okay with you going until I read this. Now, well, there might be some residual grumpiness, or outright jealousy.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

You are totally justified in any feelings of jealousy you care to indulge in. I wish I had been awake enough to think of grabbing tickets for you and others. Curse you, slow-booting brain!

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say. Most of why Firefly is good has more to do with the characters and their interactions than the plot or setting. Rent/borrow some of the DVDs, I guess.

I probably wouldn't have cried gotten as much out of it if I didn't already know the characters well.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Well, it's been a shit week; maybe some amusing TV will cheer me up a little...

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

We just watched what I guess may have been the 2-hour pilot (it's the first thing on the first DVD). So far, not my thing. Reminds me too much of NextGen. Characters too stock.

It is pretty, but so was The Pillow Book, and that didn't make it a good movie, either.

We'll try one more episode (probably Wednesday) before I completely give up.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Just don't watch The Train Job (the second episode on the DVDs) -- it's the worst episode of the entire series.

[k8cre8.livejournal.com]

I'm of the opinion that, primarily, Joss Whedon is a storyteller, and when he wants to tell a story, he picks the setting best needed to tell that story. Would Firefly work as simply a Western? Yes. It might even survive translation to other genres/settings, with varying degrees of success. But, I trust, and KFM mentioned, there are reasons for the sci-fi elements, but those reasons are generally about expressing or getting at a truth about the characters, which really, are the core of a Joss Whedon enterprise. Characters and story are what matter.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

"De gustibus non est disputandem." =)

No beatings for you!

Remind me to have you tell me about Deadwood next time I'm over.

[k8cre8.livejournal.com]

Deadwood is worth Netflixing, and I've not yet seen more than clips (it's in my queue, but, as far as I can tell, from discussions and other press, is that the one develeoped character is really Swearengen. But, I've not seen it, so that might be incorrect.

I think Firefly has weaknesses, and one of them is that there are *9* main characters. In the handful of episodes there were, the characters only had time to become individuals, not fully-formed characters. It would take years, at the rate, they were going to become full characters. I was interested in all of them, and I cared about all of them, but, the build was going to be slow. It might've worked better to introduce the other characters over time.

One way to illustrate this: In the 2-hour beginning of Firefly, you know that each character is distinct: you'd never confuse Kaylee for Inara (physical looks aside), or Mal for Simon. In 2 years, I couldn't distinguish between the two male minority CSI guys on CSI:Miami. Now that one was killed off, I distinguish them as the one that died, and the one that didn't die. now, granted, the characters in a CSI show take a backseat to the procedural, but, my point is, I could distinquish the Firefly characters, and felt they all offered potential.

[bryree.livejournal.com]

I remember reading somewhere (it might even have been here) an opinion that the largest problem with character development (or non-) in Firefly was the number of "main" characters that were introduced all at once, thus limiting the time for establishing them and making the audience care about them individually. I tend to agree with that assessment. In both 'Buffy' and 'Angel,' the viewer only had to get to know three or four "mains" initially, and then got to know others as the series progressed. That established a "care factor" that perhaps kept more people watching longer. They were able to ask: "ooh, how does this new person relate to this other one that I care about already?" rather than continuing to ask "OK, so who are these people?" for the longer time required by more characters being developed all at once.

[bigreddee.livejournal.com]

I. AM. SO. JEALOUS. Damn. All I did was go to Hawaii. We loved the show, love the trailer, can't wait to see it.